Inside the Vaccine-and-Autism Scare
Link: Full Article Early in Dr. Paul A. Offit's new book, "Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure," he describes a threatening letter he received from a man in Seattle. "I will hang you by you neck until you are dead!" it read. The FBI deemed the threat credible, assigning Offit a protective officer who, for the next few months, followed him "to and from lunch, a gun hanging at his side." He then recalls a suspicious phone call from a man who recited the names of Offit's two children and where they went to school: "His implication was clear. He knew where my children went to school." These days, the hospital he works in regularly screens his mail for suspicious packages. Offit is a baby doctor -- the chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The threats against him and his family have come from anti-vaccine crusaders who believe that vaccines cause autism. Offit has been targeted by them because he helped to develop a vaccine that prevents rotavirus, a serious gastrointestinal infection in children, and because he has been staunchly pro-vaccine in a time when there are many doubts about their safety. His book investigates the anti-vaccine movement and is a tough rebuttal against his critics, who call him "For Profit Offit" because he worked with drug companies to develop the rotavirus vaccine.
